More Layoffs Coming at Meta 🔪

Update 2023-03-08

• Sources Believe Meta Will Announce More Layoffs Shortly

• Facebook Brings Messenger Back to Its App After Nine Years

• TikTok and YouTube Boost Creators' Income with New Revenue-Shar Programs

• Senate Intelligence Committee Introduces Bipartisan Bill to Ban TikTok

• Meta Faces Potential European Blackout of Services Pending Irish DPC Decision

• OpenAI and Salesforce Introduce AI-Powered ChatGPT App for Slack Productivity

• Meta's LLaMA Language Model Leaked, Raising Questions About AI Responsibility

• Salesforce Ventures Launches $250M AI Fund to Invest in Generative AI Startups

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Big Tech and Startups

Sources Believe Meta Will Announce More Layoffs Shortly

Meta Platforms Inc. is reportedly considering layoffs of thousands of employees in a fresh round of job cuts. This new riff is in addition to the 11,000 people it laid off in November last year.

Meta has been freezing new hirings until March 2023 and cutting discretionary spending as part of its efficiency initiatives. It has also been flattening its organization, giving buyout packages to managers and cutting teams deemed non-essential.

Facebook Brings Messenger Back to Its App After Nine Year

Facebook is bringing Messenger back to its mobile app after nine years away. The move aims to simplify messaging by allowing people to send messages from one app instead of navigating between two.

• The announcement was made in a blog post about Facebook's focus areas for 2023 as the platform attempts to become more competitive with TikTok by shifting away from an app that keeps up with friends and family to one that facilitates entertainment and discovery.

• The addition of messaging capabilities seeks to enable users to share what they discover on Facebook through direct messaging, much like TikTok.

TikTok and YouTube Boost Creators' Income with New Revenue-Sharing Programs

TikTok has introduced paywalled content with videos up to 20 minutes in length. Creators can make collections of up to 80 videos that fans can pay to access using direct in-video links or from the creator's profile page.

• Revenue is split between the creator and TikTok; at the start TikTok will let the creators keep all income, but there will be a "tax" in the future.

• This is part of new initiatives by TikTok to help creators earn more money on its platform and compete with other platforms like YouTube, which now offer revenue sharing on Shorts.

• The maximum video length has gradually increased from 10 minutes, and creators are incentivized to make longer content for the newly-introduced Creativity Program.

📝 Cloudly quick take: Keeping the creators' happy fuels platforms like TikTok and YouTube. Interestingly TikTok is moving into more long-form content while YouTube is coming in on the short-form. Ultimately, there will be little difference in the type of content these two competitors have; most content creators publish on both platforms (in slightly different formats). If the discussed ban on TikTok takes effect, YouTube will be one of the clear winners.

Senate Intelligence Committee Introduces Bipartisan Bill to Ban TikTok

As a note to our comment above, the Senate Intelligence Committee is introducing a bipartisan bill to ban or prohibit foreign technology such as TikTok.

• Data privacy concerns have been raised in the U.S. regarding the app due to its parent company ByteDance being based in China and privately held; moreover, Warner is concerned about content seen by Americans on the app.

• A bill granting President Biden authority to ban TikTok was passed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week along party lines, but it must pass in both houses of Congress before being presented to Biden for signing into law.

Meta Faces Potential European Blackout of Services Pending Irish DPC Decision

Meta could face a European blackout of its services in mid-May based on the final decision from the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) to suspend the legal tool used for sending personal data to the U.S

• The DPC issued its draft decision in July 2022, which needs to be approved by fellow privacy regulators in Europe.

• If this legal tool is suspended, Meta could be without the tools to legally transfer personal data like family pictures and geolocation data to the U.S. for Facebook and Instagram, potentially shuttering its services in Europe.

• The European Data Protection Board will decide by April 14 whether to confirm the Irish decision. The European Commission aims to finalize a brand-new data agreement with the U.S. before July after two previous deals were annulled over surveillance fears.

• According to Ireland's privacy chief, Helen Dixon, any company could go down legal avenues, but it would be uncertain to obtain a stay regarding the order imposed.

• Meta spokesperson said they welcome progress policy-makers have made toward ensuring data transfer across borders.

📝 Cloudly quick take: This new legalization does not only affect Meta's product portfolio but all types of tech companies that transfer personal data between the EU and the U.S. It's apparent that it would affect how Meta structure their data transfers, but we deem it unlikely that it will lead to a "blackout" like the article suggest. Meta is most likely well-prepared to handle the situation of the policy comes into force.

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AI

OpenAI and Salesforce Introduce AI-Powered ChatGPT App for Slack Productivity

Salesforce (owner of Slack) and OpenAI introduced the ChatGPT app for Slack, incorporating advanced AI technology to help companies work more productively.

• The app provides AI-powered conversation summaries, research tools, and writing assistance within Slack.

• Customers can get up to speed faster on channels or threads, instantaneously find answers on any project or topic, and draft messages in seconds to communicate with customers or colleagues.

• Slack Connect and Huddles are integral to OpenAI's customer communication model.

• The app is in beta. Join the waitlist here.

📝 Cloudly quick take: Just like we wrote in yesterday's newsletter, every type of productivity tool and service will most likely add on an AI assistant/help/chat, etc. The AI functions will not remain a differentiation, just something everyone has (No one talks about grammar checks in word processing tools). The likely large winner is the company supplying the underlying technology (OpenAI etc.), providers of infrastructure (AWS, Azure, Nvidia, etc.), or companies with unique datasets which can leverage the value of the AI (more challenging with direct examples, maybe Quora).

Meta's LLaMA Language Model Leaked, Raising Questions About AI Responsibility

Meta's LLaMA language model, which matches or exceeds GPT-3, has been leaked online.

• The leak of LLaMA shows that OpenAI's concern over misuse of large language models was justified and raises questions about organizations' ability to deploy AI responsibly.

• It is the first time a major tech firm's proprietary AI model has been leaked to the public.

• Meta released LLaMa under a noncommercial license focused on research use cases to control misuse.

• The leak has circumvented Meta's protection and spread across the internet, leading them to file takedown requests.

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Funding, Venture Capital and M&A

Salesforce Ventures Launches $250M AI Fund to Invest in Generative AI Startups

Salesforce Ventures has launched a $250M fund to invest in generative AI startups. The fund has already invested in four companies: You.com, Anthropic, Cohere, and Hearth.AI

Salesforce is also piloting Einstein GPT, which brings ChatGPT-like features to the Salesforce platform and includes an app for Slack. Salesforce Ventures has created several vertical-specific funds and an AI fund aiming to invest in startups building AI smarts on top of their platform.